1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to distributed application systems, and more specifically, to methods and systems for selection and employment of services based upon separable, externalized criteria.
2. Description of the Related Art
Much effort is continuously expended in making computer hardware and software more usable by those who are not computer experts. As resources (memory, CPU speed, engineering and programming skills) have become more plentiful, computers became more prolific and usable by non-technicians.
Selection of services, for example, web services, business rules, hardware functions, or other computer executable logic cells, is normally embedded within programs. As such, access, control, and all management aspects of selection criteria have been limited to or required the assistance of programmers or engineers. Further, the separation and externalization of selectivity criteria from evaluation criteria has not been obvious, though once achieved many benefits are realized.
A business may employ different discount logic cells based upon ever changing requirements, and at one point in time the discount logic employed may be based upon geographic location (for example, “north” and “south”) and disposable income level. Recognition of geography as selection criteria and determination and use of disposable income level as evaluation criteria should be made first. Later, it may be decided that the geographies set should additionally include “east” and “west”, which would normally require programming or engineering skills to re-implement. More desirable would be to facilitate the addition, deletion, or replacement of the geographies set utilized in logic cell selection without requiring intervention from programmers or engineers.
Previous work provided the capability to externalize the selection mechanism through custom programmer-crafted or user-specified parameterized code fragments together with an externalization framework. See e.g., U.S. Patent Application 20030056201 entitled “System and Method for Employing Externalized, Dynamically Configurable, Cacheable Trigger Points,” to Degenaro et al., filed Sep. 20, 2001, and U.S. Patent Application YOR920030519US1 entitled “Methods and Apparatus for Business Rules Authoring and Operation Employing a Customizable Vocabulary” to Rouvellou et al., filed Dec. 1, 2003, commonly assigned and both incorporated herein by reference.